


Not Such A Clever Boy

by BigBloodyShip



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Actually everything is a bit fucked up, M/M, Power Dynamics, Q is a bit fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigBloodyShip/pseuds/BigBloodyShip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men with power are dangerous. Men with power are corrupt. Men with power are not to be trusted. Men with power are all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Such A Clever Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this came out a little darker than I intended. I usually write my fics Bond-centric, but I decided to take a stab at writing something that focuses on Q. Actually, this was inspired by a friend who said it was strange that Q would do something illegal for Bond's sake when they barely even knew each other, and then it turned into something with a darker tone. On a side note, I think I screwed up with the tenses a few times, trying to jump from past to present and all that, so sorry about that! The Bond/Q pairing is not strongly emphasised in a romantic sense, though implied, but of course, it's all up to your imagination how things might develop after the ending.

Men with power are dangerous.  
  
Men with power are corrupt.

Men with power are not to be trusted. 

Men with power are all the same.

This is a lesson that Q knows very well. It has been taught to him over and over again throughout the duration of his life, as relatively brief as it has been thus far. It is a lesson that has been repeated and reinforced time after time on too many occasions to count, and it becomes a law of life to him, a simple, unmoveable and unchangeable truth, as inevitable and life and death themselves.

He had been schooled in it starting at an early age. As a primary school student, he was often tormented by his classmates. They’d pull his hair and push him down onto the ground, kick him and hit him until they became bored of him and decided to leave him on the pavement, covered in bruises.

However, it was his mother who had first said this to him in clear, explicit terms.

He was eight years old and the only child of a working-class couple who had been struggling for years to pay the rent for a dingy flat in a rather dodgy side of London. His father had been killed in a work-related accident a few years prior, and his mother had been raising him alone. One day, he came home from school to find a notice on the door – they were being evicted by their landlord because his mother was waiting for her paycheque and had asked for two extra days to pay the rent.

 _Remember,_ his mother had told him with bitter disgust as they packed their things and prepared to leave, _Men with power are the worst kind of men. They will always do as the please, simply because they can. They are dangerous. They are corrupt. They are not to be trusted._

_Men with power are all the same._

Two weeks later, Q’s mother lost her job. She had been sacked for little reason beyond her employer’s whim.

Fast-forward several years into the future, and Q was a student of computer science, attending Cambridge on a lofty scholarship he had earned in a computer programming competition. His mother, who had never attended university, had been tremendously proud to see her son’s achievement, and was hopeful that a prestigious university degree would give him a bright future and a life better than her own, where he would not have to struggle at the mercy of others to make ends meet.

Even still, Q was well aware that he was to be subject to the will of those superior to him.

He would hear students whispering about him in the corridors - _Look at that skinny boy with the specs, he’s always in tatty clothes, isn’t he? How strange. Can’t he afford anything better? Poor thing._

Q didn’t want their sympathy. It was all little more than pretence to mask their contempt. They had power over him. They were his social betters. They had more money and resources than he ever would. They could say whatever they liked about him and there would be no consequences.

But one thing Q had the upper hand in was intellect.

He graduated well ahead of his peers with first-class honours. He wished more than anything else that his mother could have seen him that day. She had died only a few weeks before from lung cancer. They had been unable to afford treatment.

Less than a year after Q graduated, he found himself being scouted by MI6. He accepted a job as a lower-level programmer in the department they called “Q-Branch.”

They pay was exceptional, considering the fact that nothing Q was assigned to do was ever much of a challenge at all. It was mostly errands and little things – fixing malfunctioning computers for other departments, but more often than that, he was sent to fetch coffee and tea for his various superiors.

It was humiliating and degrading – he had earned first-class honours from his university, but was little more than the “coffee boy,” as he had been dubbed by the higher-ranked members of Q-Branch. Nobody ever called him by name. It was always _Coffee Boy, you’re needed on the fourth floor, one of the secretaries reckons her computer has a bug. Oi, Coffee Boy, make me a cup of tea. Hurry up, Coffee Boy. I’ve spilled something on my desk – clean it up, Coffee Boy. Move faster, Coffee Boy. I’m going to a meeting, Coffee Boy, and I expect a cup of coffee on my desk when I return, piping hot. Go hang up my coat, Coffee Boy. Coffee Boy, would you call my wife and tell her I’ll be home late? I asked for two bloody sugars, Coffee Boy. What’s the matter, is your brain made of cotton, or are you just deaf?_   

But Q wouldn’t complain. Not when he was paid twice as much as what any other employer would offer. It made him sick, though, knowing what power his employers had over him because of the money. And there was his youth to consider. He was by far the youngest employee of Q-Branch, and his senior colleagues were happy to rub in the fact that this made him nothing short of insignificant.

He was sure this was not what his mother had hoped for him. She’d be ashamed if she saw him now.

In the first months of his employment, Q was very quick to catch on and become aware of the Double-0 programme, something that a low-ranked Coffee Boy such as himself was to have no place in.

The Double-0s were trained killers and in many ways, some of the most powerful men in MI6, perhaps even more powerful than M herself – a formidable woman who Q had only glimpsed once, very briefly – because MI6 was absolutely dependent on their services and their special skills that allowed them to carry out the most dangerous and most crucial missions. Q would only see the Double-0s on occasion when they came in to receive their equipment from the quartermaster. He never spoke to them and they never so much as looked at him.

That is, until he bumped into 007.

Correction – _collided_ into 007.

He had rushed into the office, struggling to balance three precariously positioned mugs of coffee which he had been ordered to prepare by some of the senior officers of Q-Branch, and in his haste, he had run straight into the agent. He practically bounced right off of the Double-0’s strong, well-built form, scalding coffee sloshing all over himself and onto the man’s suit. He fell clumsily to the ground, each of the three mugs shattering into pieces around him.

 _Bloody hell, Coffee Boy!_ he remembers hearing someone shout, _What the fuck is the matter with you, you stupid boy!?_

Humiliated, he had fought back tears as he tried to scoop up the shards as quickly as he could. He would _not_ cry in front of everyone, he simply would not. He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him break. His dignity was all he had – what was left of it, at least – and he would not give them the power to rip it away.

But much to his surprise, 007 had knelt down next to him on the floor, and wordlessly began to help him clean up the mess. There was coffee all over his suit – a very expensive suit, from what Q could tell – but the man paid it no mind.

 _Are you all right?_ he had asked, looking at Q straight in the eyes, _Did I hurt you? Did the coffee burn you? I’ll take you to medical, if you’d like._ There was no anger or distaste in his voice or in his features. It shocked Q into silence.

It was, after all, the first time anyone at all within MI6 had spoken to him with anything beyond contempt.

The burns Q had received on his hands from the spilled coffee were very minor, but nevertheless, 007 ignored the protests of Q’s superiors and escorted him to medical to get his hands bandaged.

Q had tried to thank him, but when he turned around, the man was gone.

That incident gave him a new respect for 007. Another year went by, and whenever he caught a glimpse of 007 in the office, he’d feel a strange sense of reassurance. He doubted 007 remembered him, or even ever thought about him, but he didn’t care. He secretly promised that one day, he’d find a way to repay the man for his kindness.

One day, two years after he had first begun working at MI6, Q-Branch fell into chaos when a virus entered the system.

The then-quartermaster had no idea how it got in, or how to combat it. The entire department was in a state of panic as everyone furiously tapped away at their keyboards, trying in vain to fight off the cyber-attack.

Q watched them struggle. He felt pleased, in a sick sort of way, because it was surprisingly satisfying to see his superiors lose the sense of control that they had thought themselves to be so entitled to.

 _Don’t just stand there daftly, Coffee Boy_ , the quartermaster had snapped, _Make yourself useful._

So Q had stepped to the quartermaster’s computer, and before the quartermaster could even react, he disabled the virus with no more than twelve keystrokes.

The quartermaster had stared at him in bewilderment, jaw slack with shock and disbelief as Q stared defiantly back.

He felt powerful.

Less than a year later, the quartermaster, an aging man, retired and stepped down from his post. Many of Q’s lower-tier superiors eagerly expected to take his place, but instead, much to their chagrin and their outrage, the old man selected Q as his replacement.

And so Q had tossed away his old name, and adopted that single letter that was to become his new identity.

He loved his new job as quartermaster and the head of Q-Branch. Now, he was the one calling the shots. He was the one making commands. He was the one who ordered the department around as he pleased. He was the one with power, and how thrilling it felt to have so much dominance over the people who had once called him Coffee Boy and had made a point to assert his insignificance.

He made sure they never called him anything but “Sir.” He made sure that they knew their place. He made sure to make it perfectly clear that _he_ was in charge now, and anyone who would dare to contradict him would be treated frigidly.

Amidst all this, however, something felt strangely unfulfilled.

Just briefly before his promotion, 007 had been killed in the field. There had been an accident. Eve Moneypenny, his partner on that ill-fated mission, had missed her target and had accidentally shot 007 instead. They never even recovered his body.

He knew he should not have been so saddened to hear about the death of a man who he had only ever spoken to once, several years ago. But part of him wished dearly that 007 was still alive, because Q deeply regretted the fact that he had never had the chance to thank him for being the only person in MI6 who had treated him with any semblance of respect or kindness without expecting anything in return. He wondered what 007 would think if he were still alive and well, if he knew the clumsy Coffee Boy who had spilled coffee all over him once was now the head of Q-Branch.

Q supposed it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t as if he had been worth remembering to a man like 007, anyway.

One day, 003 came to see him in his office just before he was about to lock up for the night. Everyone else had been sent home already, as the hour was already quite late.

 _I’m not on duty for the night anymore, 003,_ he’d said flatly, _If you have any requests, you’ll have to come back in the morning._

 _It’s about that gun you gave me,_ 003 had responded, ignoring his statement completely.

_Is there a problem? I’ll look at it first thing tomorrow morning. Please excuse me._

Q moved towards the door, but 003 stepped in front of him, barring the exit. Irritated, Q tried to push past him, but the Double-0 was persistent in keeping him inside the office.

_If you don’t move right now, 003, I swear I’ll –_

_You’ll what?_ 003 had sneered cruelly, _What can you do to me, Quartermaster?_ He uttered the title Q had suffered so much to earn in a mocking tone, and Q suddenly felt quite sick. He made another attempt to push past 003, but was stopped when the agent grabbed him by the wrist with startling force.

_Let go of me._

_Why should I?_

_Let go of me, 003. That is an order._

Q would never forget the way 003 laughed.

 _You think you’re such a hotshot, don’t you? You think you can order me around? Think again, Q,_ he had said, voice frighteningly low, _You’re nothing but a child. Your job is to service the Double-0s in any way they need_.

Suddenly, with a wave of overwhelming nausea, Q understood the implication behind 003’s words.

He tried to wrench his wrist free and make another mad dash for the door, but 003 jerked him back before kicking the door shut with a loud slam. In a last-ditch effort, partly out of sheer desperation, Q sank his teeth into 003’s hand. With a roar, the man struck Q across the face with enough force to send him sprawling onto the floor. He reached down and grabbed him by the throat, and wheezing for breath with stars whirling wildly in his vision, Q tried in vain to pry his hands away. 003 threw Q against his desk, pinning him to its surface by his wrists. Q screamed and struggled, thrashing violently as he felt the clothes being torn from his body, but 003 was far too powerful for him. He knew, even as he fought to escape, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to stop what he knew was to come.

He was utterly powerless, dominated by 003.

He could do nothing but let the agent fuck him mercilessly against his own desk.

003 left him trembling and bleeding on the floor, every part of his body and mind screaming with pain and humiliation.

_Men with power are dangerous._

_Men with power are corrupt._

_Men with power are not to be trusted._

_Men with power are all the same._

_Yes_ , Q told himself as he huddled on the ground, breath coming out in ragged gasps, humiliated tears streaming down his cheeks and blood between his thighs, _Men with power are all the same_.

But every regime must fall one day, if an even more powerful body intervenes.

As he lay there, consumed with agony and shame, along with a considerable amount of self-loathing, he swore to himself that he would never let anyone take advantage of him or exercise power over him ever again.

Two days later, 003 was sent into the field. Q spoke to no-one about the assault that 003 had subjected him to. Nor did he speak to anyone about what was to happen next.

He was directing 003 through enemy territory – a town crawling with members of a terrorist cell eager for British blood. 003’s assignment was a simple extraction. As long as Q did his job, there would be no need for any actual confrontation.

That was the thing, though. That was the catch – _as long as Q did his job._

In other words, Q held 003’s fate in his hands.

 _Turn left,_ he told 003 as he stared intently at the map on the computer screen in front of him. _Keep going into that alley._

 _Are you sure?_ 003 asked dubiously. _Where are we going?_

 _Don’t worry_ , Q told him tonelessly, _Trust me. I have everything under control._

Q had deliberately led 003 straight into the hands of an assassin. He listened to the man’s shouts through the earpiece, and then to the silence that followed – which was deathly, in quite a literal sense. Later, Q lied through his teeth and told M that 003 had disobeyed his instructions and had run head-first into a trap. No-one ever questioned him.

003 came back to England in a body bag.

 _Men with power are all the same, after all_ , Q had thought wryly at 003’s memorial service. Leading 003 to his death was a despicable thing for him to do, no matter what 003 had done to him, but he felt absolutely no remorse. Instead, he felt a cold and admittedly very sick sense of satisfaction. He felt powerful. _They are dangerous. They are corrupt. They are not to be trusted. Now I am no different._

Strangely enough, the thought did not bother him as much as it should have.

He didn’t care. He had no desire to seek penance for his crimes or to ask for any divine being’s forgiveness for his sin. He had no need for a higher power to crawl to. He was his own.

003’s death, combined with 007’s a few weeks prior, cast a gloom over MI6. Perhaps it should have been a warning to Q. He was becoming careless. He was beginning to delude himself into thinking that he was untouchable.

He had been unable to fight the virus that infected M’s computer one gloomy afternoon, and he had been unable to stop the explosion that followed.

MI6 had been thrown into full-scale panic. Q didn’t remember much of that day. He hadn’t been anywhere near the blast, but he had heard it, and he had certainly felt it. There had been a deafening roar, and the entire building had shook as if the entire world was collapsing. 005 had grabbed him by the hand and had quickly escorted him outside.

The only thing Q clearly remembered was standing there in the car park, listening to the screams of horror, people shoving past him in panic with 005 shouting at him to get into his car because they needed to get away immediately. But he stayed rooted to the spot in terrified fascination, looking up at the great smouldering crater in the side of the austere white building with flames leaping forth and black smoke and ash billowing towards the sky, and he remembers feeling completely helpless as he looked at the destruction that had occurred because he had been unable to remove the virus from their computer system.

But there was a light amidst all this darkness, strangely enough.

007 was alive and well, back in London and ready to return to duty.

Q had been completely unaware of the changes until Tanner had approached him one morning as he was setting up in his new office in the underground bunker that was now to serve as MI6’s new headquarters.

He had always liked Tanner – despite his importance due to his proximity with M, he never abused his authority. Q supposed he should be more like good, simple Tanner, but that would not do for him. He was not like Tanner. He was much more selfish.

 _M wants you to meet with_ _007 in_ _the National Gallery tomorrow afternoon_ , Tanner had said, handing him the typed memo, _You’re to outfit him for an assignment in_ _Shanghai_ _._

_They’ve already appointed a new 007?_

_Not exactly – hasn’t anyone told you yet? He’s back. From the dead, it would seem._

Q didn’t ask any more questions. The notion of seeing 007 again after all this time, one-on-one, made him feel oddly nervous, but at the same time, he felt a vast sense of relief. There was no way that 007 would remember him, but nevertheless, he had never lost the desire to thank him for what he had done for him in the past.

Now, he stands unassumingly to the side in a room full of paintings, waiting patiently, and somewhat apprehensively, for 007 to arrive.

As expected, 007 is punctual, arriving exactly at the designated time. Q watches him sit down in front of a beautiful Turner painting and pauses to allow his heart to slow down its fierce beating. Slowly, he makes his way across the room to where 007 is listlessly staring at the painting in front of him. Wordlessly, Q sits down and slides next to him, maintaining a professional distance. 007 shifts slightly, but does not acknowledge Q otherwise.

“Always makes me feel a bit melancholy,” Q finds himself saying, “Grand old war ship, ignominiously being hauled away to scrap – The inevitability of time, don’t you think?”

He glances at 007, who remains silent, his gaze still fixed stonily ahead on the painting. He doesn’t give Q so much as a glance.

“What do you see?”

007 pauses.

“A big bloody ship,” he finally grunts before getting up to leave, “Excuse me.”

Q doesn’t panic. He stays seated.

 _You are in control_ , he tells himself, _You are this man’s superior_.

“007.”

The agent freezes before slowly sitting back down with a disgruntled exhale of breath. Pleased, Q continues.

“I’m your new quartermaster.”

“You must be joking.”

“Why? Because I’m not wearing a lab coat?”

“Because you still have _spots_ ,” 007 replies, and Q bristles. He will not let this man gain the upper hand. He simply refuses to.

“My complexion is hardly relevant,” he retorts a little more coldly than he had intended.

“Your competence is.”

“Age is no guarantee of efficiency.”

“And youth is no guarantee of innovation,” 007 counters easily.

Q stiffens.

“I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop, sitting in my pyjamas, before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field,” he states flatly.

“So why do you need me?” 007 asks.

“Every now and then, a trigger needs to be pulled.”

“Or not pulled,” 007 says, leaning closer, an amused smile tugging his lips upwards, “Hard to know which when you’re in your pyjamas.”

Q is completely still for a moment. He doesn’t know how to respond, so he schools his features into passiveness. Truthfully, he can’t bear the thought that 007 is not the man he had thought him to be. Perhaps he is like all other powerful men, after all – the kind of man who will never see him as anything but a child unworthy of respect. If Q is to surrender, then he won’t let 007 have the satisfaction of seeing just how much it affects him. He will surrender with dignity. Frostily, he holds out his hand for a shake.

But 007’s smile is warmer now as he takes in Q’s features.

“Q,” he says as he takes Q’s hand, and something in 007’s eyes tell Q that 007 doubtlessly recognises him and knows exactly who he is.

“007.”

They shake hands.

Q likes 007’s handshake. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he shakes hands. Some reveal their weakness with a flimsy grasp, and some try to assert their dominance by squeezing harder than necessary. 007’s manner of shaking hands is neither. It is warm and firm – and it tells Q that they are on equal planes. Q had been expecting the latter. He’d experienced it so many times before – an arrogant, patronising handshake that labelled Q as something weaker and inferior. But there is none of that in 007’s handshake. There is no desire to dominate, no intention to put Q in his place, no declaration of superior power. It is something else, something that Q can’t quite describe – a candid, genuine sort of energy that reads _respect_.

Q has to admit that he is surprised.

He promptly decides that he does like 007, after all.

In the days following his first official meeting with 007 – James Bond, that is, though Q is not allowed to refer to him as anything save his surname or his codename for the sake of professionalism – Q goes about his office with his head in a haze. He can’t stop thinking about 007 and his warm smile and solid handshake. Nor can he forget the kindness the man had shown him in his earlier days at MI6 when all he had known was condescension, and on some occasions, cruelty. 

To say he is _infatuated_ with 007 would be ridiculous, of course. He is merely intrigued.

But that’s not to say that Q doesn’t find him handsome. Because he most certainly does. Not that he can be blamed. Everyone else thinks so, too.

However, there is something else that slowly begins to metastasise within the deeper, darker recesses of Q’s mind. He finds himself enjoying the fact that he has power over 007. Very much like how he had felt with 003 several months ago, some sick part of him feels an overwhelming thrill over the fact that he is in charge of supervising 007’s missions, telling him where to go and what to do. 007 is dependent on him, and must follow his orders. Despite Q’s best efforts to convince himself otherwise, he does gain a rather dark and twisted sort of enjoyment from all of this.

He could, at a whim, direct 007 into harm’s way. Lead him straight to his death. Part of him fears that he might actually do it for no other reason aside from the simple fact that he _can_.

Power is intoxicating, and dangerously addictive.  

Q doesn’t quite know how he has become so cavalier towards the notion of toying with the life of a man that he respects, but it makes him sick to his stomach.

It frightens him.

Perhaps this is all too much for him to think about. Perhaps power has once again given him a false sense of invincibility. Or perhaps his steadily growing fascination - and perhaps even attraction - with 007 is muddling his senses. Whatever the case is, shortly after 007 returns from his mission abroad, the man behind the explosion at their old headquarters in tow, he manages to lose control yet again.

Raoul Silva overpowers his security measures, viciously penetrates his firewalls, and ravages his meticulously crafted codes with the ease of smothering an infant because Q had foolishly made the elementary mistake of plugging the man’s computer into their system before scanning it for any potential bugs. He may as well have invited that virus in for a cup of tea and some biscuits.

And it all had to happen in front of 007, too.

He watches helplessly, alarm blaring in his ears, as 007 dashes off to assess the damage.

On the computer screen, a grinning skull appears to taunt him.

 _Not such a clever boy_.

Q stares at the skull as it opens and closes its mouth grotesquely. He can imagine its shrill, triumphant laughter, and he does not remember ever feeling so _weak_. The only weapon he had in his arsenal to fight a world full of men eager to put him in his place was his intellect, now rendered utterly useless by his own folly. Now he has nothing, and he _is_ nothing. Every fibre of his body tenses as he stares at the computer screen, the animated skull burning itself into his very core, and he finds himself blinking hard and struggling to fight back tears.

Even after everything Q has been through and everything he has worked for, he is still the boy who had always been getting beat up by his classmates, the boy who had been evicted with his mother from their flat, the boy who had then helplessly watched his mother lose her job, the boy who had been whispered about at university, the Coffee Boy, the boy who had let himself be taken advantage of by 003, the boy who had been unable to stop the explosion a MI6 that had taken far too many lives, and now the boy who let a virus into their system yet again.

The stupid, silly, naïve, weak little boy that always has been and always will be dominated by men with power.

007 must think him to be such a fool. Q is sure that any fragment of respect the man might have had for him is surely lost now.

But 007 manages to surprise him yet again.

Q has finally managed to remove the virus from the system – although it is already far too late, and the damage has already been done – when 007 comes back into contact with him, calmly asking for his help in leading Raoul Silva to Skyfall.

Q can’t quite believe that 007 still has any faith in his abilities, enough to trust him completely with something so personal and so confidential.

What 007 is asking him to do could potentially cost him his career. It could even get him charged for insubordination and treason. It could get him thrown into prison for the rest of his life.

Strangely enough, none of this bothers Q. He will do this for 007 because he is not being ordered to. 007 is giving him a choice. He didn’t have to. He could threaten Q into helping him if he was so inclined – he had that power. Any other man would take advantage of having such power.

But 007 isn’t that kind of man. He is not the same. He’s someone else entirely – someone who respects him, someone who believes in him, someone who values him, someone who sees him as not a inferior creature to dominate and to treat in whichever way pleases him, but as an equal.

Q supposes that this will be his way of thanking 007 not only for the kindness he had shown him so many years ago during their first encounter, but also for not being the same as other men with power, and for being nothing more and nothing less than James Bond instead.

He puts his fingers to his keyboard, but he doesn’t quite feel powerful in that strange, dark way that had become frighteningly familiar. He feels like something else –

He feels like he is worth something after all.


End file.
